


Student & Staff

by Idle_Hans



Series: Pocket Universities [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Wandlore (Harry Potter), world-building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:01:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24855028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Idle_Hans/pseuds/Idle_Hans
Summary: Last-minute customers can be frustrating, but seldom boring.
Series: Pocket Universities [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1798099
Comments: 1
Kudos: 18





	Student & Staff

In accordance with the 'life is too short' attitude which sometimes seizes the elderly (or anyone, really) after a life-threatening experience (specifically several months as a prisoner of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named), Garrick Ollivander had instituted a less tiring method of allowing the wand to choose the wizard. Instead of clambering up and down ladders all day, fetching wand after wand for each customer to try, and then putting all but one of them away again afterwards, he now routinely employed the precision analysis method previously reserved for buyers of custom-made wands. He'd never again know the occasional joy of guessing a child's wand choice correctly first time unassisted, but he got to sit down a lot more, and he only had to climb a ladder once per purchase.

"These are testing wands," he said, waving his hand across the long row of crystal rods lying on a rack which ran the full length of a narrow table in the middle of the shop. Each rod was a different length and had several fragments of wood and other substances embedded within it. "First I need you to wear this diagnostic vambrace on your wand arm. Yes, like that, good. Now, one after another, starting at this end, I want you to pick up each wand and wave it around for a second or two. Then put it back and go on to the next one."

Naïla obeyed. Each time she picked up a crystal rod and waved it around, swirling lines of ink appeared on the sheet of parchment on the counter in front of Mr Ollivander, adding to the markings that had appeared when all her measurements were taken. Each rod felt different: some of them hot, some of them cold, some glowed, some made noises, some of them made Naïla's arm tingle, and one of them even made her teeth hurt. Strangely, most of the longer rods felt light, and easy to wave around, while several of the shortest ones felt heavy and sluggish. She was about halfway along the row when she took hold of a medium length rod; but almost as soon as she lifted that one out of the rack, the runes inscribed into the vambrace on her forearm flared with a ugly light, and the rod in her hand shattered into several pieces with a loud _Crack_!"

"Well! Clearly not any of the normal run of cores!," said Ollivander as he stepped around to the front of the counter and waved his wand to clear up the mess. " _Evanesco_. Did you cut your hand, Miss Waters?"

"No sir," replied Naïla.

"Then continue," said the wandmaker, waving his wand at the rack again. "But skip all the ones that are now glowing red. I promise you none of the others will go bang."

She returned to waving rod after rod, and Mr Ollivander returned to studying the marks appearing on the parchment. Finally she got to the end of the row. Naïla made as if to remove the vambrace from her arm, but without looking up the wandmaker said, "No, leave that on for now, please." So she stood and waited until, after a long pause, Mr Ollivander looked up.

"This parchment now contains a complete copy of your magical signature. I shall of course burn it as soon as I'm done with it." He paused, took in a breath, then let it out with a little sigh. "It's quite clear that I have no wand in stock at present that will suit you. In your case, none of the standard wand types will do. Had you been able to come to me at the beginning of summer, I would have had time to make one to your requirements. Had you come to me last week, I could have contacted other members of my guild in the hope that one of them had something suitable in stock. But it's August 31st, and you'll need your wand with you for lessons by the morning of the day after tomorrow at the very latest." Another pause. "With or without you in tow, I'm far too old to spend the rest of the day apparating from shop to shop around the world, so there's only one thing for it."

Mr Ollivander waved his wand. The front door of the shop made a locking sound, and writing appeared on the window to declare, ' **.RUOH NA FLAH NI KCAB .TUO** ' Then he rummaged around in a couple of drawers for a moment, taking out a couple of objects. One looked like a cross between a bangle and a decorative wrist cuff, and it disappeared into his pocket. The other was a length of red cord with tassels at either end. "This is a portkey," he told the girl, holding out one end of the cord. "Have you ever used one?" Naïla shook her head. "Well, grab hold, hang on tight, bend your knees, and prepare for a bumpy landing. _Demigro_!"

* * *

"This," explained Ollivander after they picked themselves up from the, fortunately cushion-charmed, stone floor, "is the Arrival Hall of the Museum of World Magic in the Great Library of Alexandria, which muggle history records as having been burnt to the ground by a raging mob the better part of two thousand years ago. They certainly tried. The room we want is this way."

Ollivander led the way through the museum, exchanging a friendly nod with each guard they passed. As they walked, he talked.

"These days we use wands for almost everything, but they were first invented for doing precision work, and indoor use. Before that, and for a good century or two after when out of doors, most witches and wizards carried a magical staff, anything from three feet in length to two feet longer than a person was tall. However cumbersome that might seem today, a staff did have a few advantages over a wand. Firstly, they're quite powerful in comparison. Secondly, any muggle who saw one would think it a walking cane, or a badge of office, or even a fighting stick; all of which were normal items to carry around, once upon a time. The roads weren't as smooth and safe back then. Lastly, unless it were one of the very short ones, you could sit on it for flying. We only started riding broomsticks after we stopped using staves."

He fell silent while they walked through a darkened room where a museum guide was explaining a vast, three-dimensional animation of what looked like the ptolemaic model of the solar system.

"The reason why it's so important to have a wand that is exactly right for you, is that most other wands will never work even half as well, especially not while you're learning magic. A truly unsuitable wand will be hazardous even to attempt to use. Here we are."

They had arrived at a small side chamber with only one entrance. Once Naïla had followed him in, Mr Ollivander took the red velvet rope from his pocket and hung it between two little hooks at either side of the doorway, as if to say 'this exhibit is now closed'. Then he took out his wand and cast two spells. The first one created a translucent shimmer in the doorway, through which it was now impossible to see clearly. The second spell vanished the glass from all the display cases, which were full of wands, batons, sceptres and staves. The labels were all in some language the girl didn't recognise.

"The objects in this room," said Ollivander, "are not museum property. They're my family's private collection of ancient and unusual wands and other magical foci. That, for example, was the sceptre of the witch-lords of Khand. Whenever the old lord died, the first person to survive the act of picking that up became the new ruler.

"But I didn't need to tell you that, did I?" He pointed at the diagnostic vambrace still on Naïla's forearm. "With the help of that, you can feel it, can't you? You can almost hear voices all around you murmuring ' _keep away, don't touch, I'm dangerous_.' "

Naïla nodded nervously.

"Nothing in this room is actually cursed, you understand. It's just that each of these objects is a magical focus so very individual in its characteristics that it cannot bear to be used by anyone whose magical signature is the slightest bit incompatible." Mr Ollivander stopped for another of his significant pauses, and then continued. "However, if I know my craft, then there's one voice in this room that is not whispering 'keep away'; it's _singing_ to you. Am I right?"

He watched the girl take a deep breath, close her eyes, and stand there as if listening. After a moment she slowly turned towards one of the cases, opened her eyes, and stepped forward. She had her back now to Ollivander, so she didn't see him cross his fingers and silently mouth, 'Don't die. Please don't die.'

She closed her hand around an inch-thick staff about four-and-a-half feet long. She lifted it up as though it weighed almost nothing, swung it into a vertical position, and brought the shining ferrule down against the floor. The tap of metal against stone sounded like a bell chime and a rumble of thunder combined.

"It likes you! How splendid!", cried Mr Ollivander.

Naïla looked up at him with an awestruck expression. Ollivander slowly got down onto one knee so that he was at eye level with her. Gently taking the staff from her hand, he said, "This staff lets me touch it because I'm a wandmaker. It's letting you touch it because, like all staves, all wands, it was made to be used, and it wants to serve its purpose. It may be in my collection, but it's not mine, I don't own it. It belongs to the one for whom it was first made, and it always shall. So I can't sell it to you, and I can't give it to you. But given the way it reacted to you, I don't have the right to keep you away from it, either. The one who owns it lived long ago, and she's most unlikely to be wanting it back any day soon, so I think it's safe to lend it to you for a year or so." He handed the staff back to the girl. "If I write a letter explaining things to your teachers, what do you say to using this until I can make you a wand of your own?"

"Thank you!", Naïla breathed. She gazed at it happily for a moment, but then looked back at Mr Ollivander with a troubled expression. "It's going to be a bit awkward to carry around when I'm not using it, though."

"Ah," replied Mr Ollivander, as he took the wrist cuff out of his pocket. Now that she could get a good look at it, it was really quite pretty. "I can certainly help with that. If you wear this, it'll let you store the staff in a little pocket of nothingness whenever you don't need it."

He pointed at the diagnostic vambrace. "I'll swap you."


End file.
